The DYR blog

Monday, April 11, 2011

Do you ever wish you could go back in time and sit in front of your first computer, that ZX81 or Commodore 64 and be as excited and impressed as you were then?

Well, perhaps after this week you will be able to! The breaking news is that Commodore is making a Windows PC in the exact mould of the light brown chunky commodore keyboard from the 1980's.

So, basically you will be able to buy a modern computer in a classic case, the equivalent of donning your Father's flared trousers and funking it up in a local 2011 nightclub.

When the Commodore 64 was first released, back in the halcyon days of 1982, it had an amazing amount of memory... (wait for it) 64 kilobytes. These days most doorbells have more memory than that, but at the time it was inspiring! And it cost £300 in the UK, and was the best selling personal computer of the time, with sales totalling 17 million!

The design of the computer was immediately iconic. That classic brown case used to be affectionately known as the "breadbox" due to well... it's casing looking like a breadbox. But it did look like a very cool breadbox!

The new computer will run windows 7, have a 160GB hard drive, and 2GB of RAM (which does put the old one in the shade somewhat). Brilliantly though, you will actually be able to play your old C64 games! So get up into your loft and seek them out! Alternatively you can get them online for a small fee (but they might load a bit quicker than the old ones!)

The slightly frustrating news is that you won't be able to get your hands on a new C64 just yet. It has been such a good idea that the first ones sold out within 24 hours! The new ones aren't expected to ship until May or June - they will cost $565 (£365) for the basic set up.

What are you waiting for? Ah, that's right. Your C64 to load up it's next program.... might just be enough time to go out and catch a few newts.